"Abyssal Throne" is Spanish death-metal act NETHERTALE's debut album, and it definitely delivers much of what is expected of a death metal album - with a few delightful twists. I must emphasize the importance of musical twists in any brutal genre. Most extremely heavy types of music tend to lack dynamics (i.e. everything's going full-blast) and melody (duh), so about a minute in your brain just shuts it down as background noise.

And now, back to the band:

Clearly drawing influence from many of the various sub-genres and offshoots of death-metal, this record has something for anyone who has a warm place for that brutal sonic violence in their hearts. The guitar parts have the heavy sound of modern metal, while varying between the super palm-muted parts of the more brutal areas of the genre, to intricate lick-like riffs, to more melodic chord progressions - very well done. Add to that extremely well-crafted solos and leads throughout (don't forget to carry the technical mastery), and you see why I love their merciless guitar section.

Vocals vary as well throughout - covering most of the growls-scream spectrum - again, melo-death meets brutal meets old-school. The variation in pitch and style relieves a lot of the monotony inherent in a vocal style practically void of melody (remember what I said earlier about my problem with many of the more brutal genres?). Here's a great idea that keeps the listener on their toes is symphonic arrangements (wait for it) that only come for a very short time, once in a while; very nice and very interesting sonically.

 Just a second before we wrap everything up, here's a little FF, Fun Fact: the lyrics by vocalist Jabo Garcia all follow the course of novels he's writing (the band hints future releases will follow the same idea, in a sort of record per novel sort of way). Talk about ambition!

 While the record is definitely very interesting and lots of fun, I feel that there are parts of it that have not been explored in their fullest, and some elements of the band's sound still needs some honing before it is perfected.

All in all, a very well-made record (especially for a first release), but as always - there's room for improvement.